Here Is What They Don't Tell You
by sparkleofhope
Summary: "What is more unfair than having to choose between being a monster or being a hero? When you have to be both. When you learn that the road to hell is paved with more than just good intentions. Here is what they don't tell you: As a shinobi, you are no heads or tails - you are the coin." Yamanaka OC
1. Chapter 1

_"War ate a girl and spat out a woman." - L.H.Z_

* * *

Akira is four years old but even so, things unknown by older kids are glaringly obvious to her. Reading comes easily and so does using her chakra and she can't quite comprehend why others struggle. _She is too quiet_, people tell her father. _Too proper and graceful for her age._

She fails to see the logic behind their disapproval of her behaviour. Why act or move unless you have to? Why scream and get in trouble? _Shinobi are quiet. _So, she must be quiet as well. Her parents are shinobi, her grandparents were shinobi too. She joins the Academy and trains to become one because _what else is there to become? _Puzzles stir her heart in ways toys never will. Weapons feel right in her tiny hands and _it's easy, so easy to fire and hit her target._

Civilians, adults, and children alike, are noisy. Forgetful. Rash and volatile and _so stupid _in comparison to Konoha's elite forces. Mediocre. Ordinary. Laid out bare and open like books. And Akira adores mysteries, so much so that her decision to become one herself makes perfect sense.

She is superior to her peers, clan children themselves, _and it shows. _It's not that she trains harder and longer, it's not that she has the memory of an elephant, it's not even how quiet and attentive she is. _It's talent, raw talent. And a scary amount of self-discipline that even most full-fledged shinobi can only dream of._

"Prodigy." Akira repeats the word people take to naming her, tastes it on her lips and vows to do it justice.

She has yet to know what that means and all that it entails.

* * *

Akira takes to climbing the walls and ceiling of their house. She shouldn't but there is a vibration in her bones so deep that it's impossible to ignore.

She doesn't want to, either. Because the fierce swirl of energy she feels inside is _hers_.

(Hers to conquer and tame and control.)

It won't go to waste and shrink but grow and expand. Akira will see to it. No matter what anyone else says. Her kaa-san has plenty to say but it usually goes past her ears.

Tonight, is different.

She is asleep, _would have been asleep_ if not for the insults the adults in charge of her hurl at each other with anger and venom. They are loud.

"Tatsuya, you selfish bastard. I hope you choke on your pride one day." her mother snarls.

Her father scoffs. "Fancy choice of words, coming from a stuck-up highborn who -"

"Left her easy, luxurious life to become a ninja you ungrateful -"

"Tsk, Chizuru you wound, if you are to be trusted, my cold heart."

Where did their usual selves go?

Confused, Akira throws aside the covers and leaves her bed. The floor squeaks under her small, determined feet. She hears a crack and jumps slightly. Her parents are far from clumsy.

(That was deliberate.)

"HOW ELSE WOULD YOU CALL THE REPULSIVE PIECE OF MEAT THAT DOOMED OUR DAUGHTER TO A LIFE OF BLOOD AND KILLING -"

"I did not do that, you nutcase of a woman. Akira chose for herself." a pause. "And quit throwing our porcelain at me!"

Another crack echoes.

Her mother shrieks like a fury who climbed from _hell. _"Do you hear how ridiculous you sound right now, Tatsuya? SHE IS FIVE, you can't expect her to choose the shinobi system."

"You are right. It chose her the moment she was born a prodigy -"

"If you hadn't encouraged her -"

Her father snaps harshly. "Wake-up already, her relatives are ninja, we are ninja, the village's leader is a ninja. I'd be concerned if she wasn't the slightest bit curious."

"Curiosity which I would have gladly satisfied. This is something else, Tatsuya and if you can't see that..."

"I see her becoming exceptional, the best that Konoha has to offer. Is Akira ambitious? Damn right she is." he boasts.

"What if she grows up to become ruthless?" Chizuru screams her lungs out.

"What if she doesn't?" her father retorts just as loudly. "We'd be burying her because you couldn't stomach..."

Akira registers a heart-breaking sob and just like that, whatever Tatsuya was going to say, dissolved into thin air.

* * *

She is even quieter and composed after that, as if to make up for their complete loss of control. Her parents no longer argue because they love each other and had reached an agreement. What the agreement is, she has no idea. The only thing that matters is that they never fight each other again.

Akira is seven when she graduates from the Academy, top of her class. She becomes part of Team Eight, her teammates being Uchiha Shisui and Kannagi Ryuji while Inuzuka Hanare gets assigned as their jonin sensei.

Ryuji is bold, Shisui is funny and Hanare teaches them what a pack is. Her genin days are the most beautiful she'd ever live.

Akira doesn't believe people when they tell her that.

* * *

The Third Shinobi War comes barging at Konoha's gates and every shinobi available, up until fifty years old, active, or otherwise, must answer the call. Yamanaka Tatsuya, her father, gets sent to the frontlines with his former teammates, a Nara and Akimichi respectively. He crunches down to her eye level and tells her he'd be back before she knows it.

Six months later, a headband is all that's left of him. They never find the body. Akira takes it and wears it as if it were her own. It's all she has to remember him by when time would have blurred and smudged her memories of him.

Yamanaka Chizuru, her mother, offers medical assistance to the injured. She is restless and ultimately gives her life to save other people. Some say she died the day her husband was labelled _KIA _with no convincing proof. The last person her kaa-san saves before she closes her eyes to the world is Uchiha Jun.

The man takes her in and raises her as if she were his own.

* * *

It's not long before Konoha grows desperate and need of manpower demands to be met. Genin are promoted to chunin left and right because they must put an end to this slaughter.

More blood gets spilled. Innocent blood, this time. Children that had never ventured outside their birthplace are forced to leave and go blindly inside enemy territory. Some are terrified. Others are empty. The war had robbed them off everything they ever loved.

_They won't have Konoha._

Akira gets promoted to chunin at nine without undergoing any kind of exam or evaluation. If _tou-sama and kaa-san were alive..._

She shakes her head. Yamanaka Tatsuya and Yamanaka Chizuru are dead. She is not.

And disobeying orders is against everything the girl has ever been taught.

She tries not to think of the people she murders as _people. _She grits her teeth when the more cowardly ones beg for mercy. _What's that? Mercy?_

They had none for her father.

Akira sees only targets when she raises her sword.

* * *

Kannagi Ryuji dies in her arms. He took the full brunt of the lightning jutsu that a Kumo nin had cast. After her parents died, she didn't think she'd have any more tears left to shed.

_He always had a knack for proving me wrong_. Akira thinks fondly. She smooths down his brown hair as rain falls upon them, knowing there isn't anything she could have done to prevent it.

When she looks up, her voice trembles. "Shisui, your eyes..."

_They are bleeding. _She wants to say but the words get stuck in her throat. The meaning of his new Sharingan isn't lost on her.

Unlike the Hyuga who have their Byakugan, the price to becoming stronger is high for Uchihas.

_Too high._

Shisui touches his cheeks, looks at his bloody fingertips then back to the corpse that was his best friend. He falls to his knees and mourns. Akira slowly lowers Ryuji's head to the ground and approaches him.

They cling to each other fiercely and promise to kill the Kumo nin that took their teammate from them.

* * *

When the war is over, Shisui's name gets written alongside legends in the bingo book. People all over Konoha praise him, whisper his name in wonder and bow reverently if they happen to cross paths.

No one knows what it cost him. They don't care to.

Akira does though she pretends not to. She refuses to dwell on the past. She and Shisui had kept their promise. They avenged Ryuji. The world recovers quickly and many children are born in the years that follow the war.

Including the heiress to the Yamanaka clan.

She ought to pay little Ino a visit because it doesn't matter how many Uchiha she sees upon waking every day, how much she struggles to learn the Grand Fireball Jutsu or how warmly her guardian Uchiha Jun and his wife treat her.

Akira doesn't fit in.

With her blue eyes and bright blonde hair, a gift for reading people and a talent for intruding their minds, she sticks out like a sour thumb in a sea of dark-haired, dark-eyed, stuck-up geniuses.

Surely, she won't ever belong with them, right?


	2. Chapter 2

_"Home is people, not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what's not there anymore." - Robin Hobb_

* * *

Akira stares at the Yamanaka clan campound's gates. The bush clover above, mocking her. She is no flower. Her parents weren't flowers, either. Flowers don't do what she did. They don't kill for the garden they think of as 'home.'

The connection between highly-trained assasins and bush clovers has always eluded her.

She doesn't understand.

Akira approaches those who guard the entrance. Their eyes look her up and down and though they don't recognize her, the resemblance she bears them is unmistakeable.

"I don't know you."

"Neither do I."

Her lips curl upwards into a sadornic smile. "I was...adopted."

"Ah, the Uchiha." they nod.

Akira's eyes narrow. "I'm as much Yamanaka as you are."

"I doubt it." Guard number two says.

"I'm here to congratulate Inoichi-sama and Seiren-sama." _Be polite._ "Please step aside." The word 'please' might as well have cut her. It's humiliating; having to beg just so, she could step foot inside her own clan's campound.

Dumb and dumber seem satisfied because they smirk. "Since you asked us so nicely, little girl..." they finally allow her free passing.

Had she possessed fewer manners, Akira would have spat in their faces. Alas, she settles for an icy glare, walking inside with confident, sure steps. Once the gate closes after her, she takes a moment to drink in the sight of the home she hasn't seen in a long time.

Nothing's changed, but her chest still feels empty.

She looks to the distance where her house is. Used to be. A young couple, much like her own parents had been, lives there now. Everything feels wrong. If her eyes sting, Akira ignores it.

_I'm done crying. Shinobi don't cry. Shinobi don't cry. Shinobi don't..._

The swing she adored, the one her kaa-san had pushed with enough strength to make her squeal but not to send her flying, is standing a few feet away. Untouched. Still there.

It beckons her closer. She doesn't fight it. The swing is big enough to accomodate her and suddenly Akira is reminded of just how young she really is.

_I'm turning twelve in two months._

The realization gives her pause, tugs at her heartstrings. She feels seven years older. Shisui, Akira is certain, probably feels ten.

She dares not to think of sensei.

"Miss?" a voice breaks through her musings. It's a servant girl.

The blonde schools her features into something she deems acceptable of a shinobi.

"Yamanaka Akira." she introduces herself. "Let the clanhead and his wife know of my arrival. It'd be a honour for me to congratulate them."

The servant nods. "H-hai." her voice trembles, uncertain whether she should bow or not.

Akira makes that choice for her by focusing once more on the campound's infrastructure. The sight of flowers steals her breath away. She used to loved gardening. Whenever she wasn't training, the huge garden had been her go-to-place. It helped her think.

She senses Yamanaka Seiren approaching before she sees her. Inoichi-sama isn't home, it's a logical conclusion. The lack of another chakra signature tells her as much.

By the time the clan's matriach walks outside, Akira is already bowing.

"Please raise your head, sweetie."

The sugary tone is something she hasn't expected. She does as told only to be greeted by a lovely sight.

"Seiren-sama." she says respectfully, eyes inevitably drawn to the baby in her arms. Ino is only three weeks old but her eyes, blue eyes like clear, icy water are intelligent. She watches Akira with interest.

It stuns her.

"Congratulations."

The Yamanaka matriach gives her a gentle smile. "Thank you." A pause. "Would you like holding her?"

Akira blinks, perplexed.

"Yes." she replies, voice soft. Her hands reach out to hold the clan heiress, being careful and gentle...things she hasn't been in a very long time. Ino grabs her pinky, holding onto it and looking up at her.

The baby has a powerful presence and a warmth to her that Akira swears to protect.

"She is strong." she tells Seiren-sama before handing her back, bowing at the waist and leaving the campound.

For a split moment, Akira no longer felt like an outcast in her own home.

* * *

No one flaunts their nobility like the Uchiha. It's one of her thoughts upon stepping foot inside the clan's campound for the first time. Even now, everywhere she glances at, she sees the symbol, the Uchiwa fan, in all its white and red glory.

It mocks her, too.

_You will never be one of us._

Akira straightens her back and glares.

_I don't want to._

The glare morphs into a small smile the second Uchiha Jun, her guardian, approaches. All the warmth the clan lacks, he and his wife seem to have in spades.

_It's almost like...they don't belong here, either._

A silly thought, one she is quick to dismiss and bury least she entertains the notion and gets attached. If the war taught her anything, it's this: people are temporary but the pain of losing them stays with you long after they're gone.

Her loyalty, Akira decides then, it's to the village.

_Just the village._

_And little Ino, _who she has already sworn to defend.

"Did something happen when you went to visit the Yamanaka?" Despite the mask she carefully crafted, her guardian sees right through it. The notion is both soothing and infuriating...and so is his fathery tone, the one that says _'name who hurt you so, I can rip them to shreds.'_

Akira looks up to find a pair of concerned, dark eyes though the burning flame residing inside them is very much visible. He seems ready to battle an entire clan...

Her eyes sting for a second time today and she hates the weakness that is the opposite of what shinobi are supposed to be like. "Iie, nothing happened. I was reminicising only."

A big, calloused hand lowers to rest on top of her head. "I didn't get the chance to know your parents well, but I'm sure they'd be proud of you." A pause. "Just like I am."

Akira allows a lone tear to slip through her defenses. It rolls down her cheek as she finds herself at loss of what to say. Something catches her eye then and the realization makes her feel cold and even more troubled than earlier.

"Are you leaving on a mission?" The meaning of the shinobi gear her guardian has donned isn't lost on her.

Uchiha Jun nods.

"I will be back before you know it."

The words have her mind reeling with possibilities, each of them worse than the one before it. Akira's past feels so distant some days.

This isn't one of those.

_Will you, really?_

She wants to ask, but stops herself, knows better than to tempt fate. It took so much from her already.

"Be safe, Jun-san." the blonde tells him instead. Politely caring, appropiate...and so much less than what she feels like saying.

The Uchiha kisses the crown of her head and gives her a reassuring smile before walking away. Akira is left wondering whether this is the last time she sees him alive and not resting in a casket box.

Her father was labelled KIA with no convincing proof whatsoever. She doesn't know what's worse, being certain he died or the hope that refuses to give her mind peace.

_"I will be back before you know it."_

She closes her eyes.

_Where are you, tou-san?_

A week later, Akira finds herself in front of the Memorial Stone. It isn't rational, hating a rock, but she does and sanity is overrated anyway. The shinobi world is full of lunatics. Some simply mask it better than others.

Fingertips trace the name of her fallen teammate. Ryuji died a hero, but she would have rather had him be a villain if only he were still alive today. Funny, to the Kumo-nin that killed him, that's what he had been.

A villain.

It's not fair, she thinks. Ryuji deserved better than to die on a muddy battlefield, away from home and leaving behind a family that loved him more than life itself, leaving a team...

That still blames themselves.

For not being quicker, stronger, _better._

"I was too late."

She has always been early but the one time it was needed the most. Her life is full of _too soon, too early, stop rushing, stop, breathe, don't rush, why are you always rushing_

Akira was born a premature baby, two months before the due date. She learned to walk two weeks after her first crawling attempt. By the age of three, she was reading better than children twice her age and firing kunai just as better. Chunin at nine and deadlier than some of the much older enemies.

What good had all those feats done in the end?

"So was I." a dry, hollow voice speaks from behind her and Akira doesn't wonder how someone has managed to sneak upon her, a sensory ninja.

"Hatake-san." she greets, her voice mirroring his in emptiness.

It's not the first time their paths happen to cross. Many times, the death of loved ones has brought them together.

_"How do we defeat death?" _Akira remembers asking him one starry night, one she couldn't bring herself to enjoy.

Kakashi looked at her then and this she has not forgotten.

_"We remember."_

Her way didn't work. Ignoring the grief and the pain, soldiering on, acting as though there was no one to mourn solved nothing. So, she might as well try his.

Akira feels like a hypocrite for judging Shisui. Here she is, clinging to the past, perhaps worse than how he is doing.

Kakashi himself never asks though she hears the question in the silence he leaves stretching on, like the last sounds a piano makes when the melody is over and you know it is, but the notes still echo in your head. You don't feeling like playing again and yet you can't bring yourself to give-up the piano, either.

So, you let someone else make that choice for you. Do you continue or do you stop because your presence is no longer wanted nor needed, because another song would be pushing it?

"It's Ryuji's death anniversary." she says and Kakashi hums, as though he understands and for once she doesn't get angry because unlike other people...

_He does._

She wishes he didn't.

"I can leave." he offers, but Akira sees the way his shoulders sag under some invisible weight, hasn't failed to notice the dark circles underneath the lone visible eye.

She doesn't ask, either.

"Stay." the young kunoichi tells him instead.

It's a foreign word for Akira's tongue, one she has begged people to do before...but in her head only, never outloud and they always left, always, sooner or later. Yet, she dares to hope, perhaps foolishly, that this time things will be different because she actually swallowed down her pride _and voiced it._

She doesn't know what she's asking of him. To stay with her near the Memorial Stone or stay alive?

_Aren't they the same thing?_

Kakashi grunts his approval and she nearly asks him what did he approve of.

The name he traces with the tip of his fingers leaves her cold.

**_Nohara Rin_**

They have a silent agreement, to not ask who died, why they died or when. To not pry or twist knives into wounds that will never truly heal, not in this lifetime when they are still here and the closest people to them aren't.

It's the first time she considers breaking the agreement.

Having just returned from a mission to Kumogakure, Akira hasn't heard anything and though she knows it's only a matter of time...

She doesn't want the rumors, the half-truths, the incomplete stories...

"I...killed her."

_What?_

Blue hues widen in disbelief because _that_ she doesn't believe to be true, can't. Kakashi is many things, some of which she will never find out, however...

It hits her then, like a bucket of icy cold water. In the private confines of her mind, doesn't she also blame herself for Ryuji's death? Isn't survivor's guilt something she and the masked-nin have in common?

"How?" Akira asks him simply instead of denying the deed. She wants to help him conclude the opposite.

Kakashi's eye bores into hers, searching. It's as though he didn't expect such reaction, as though he expected disdain, judgement...anything, but the calmness she exudes.

"Chidori."

A sharp exhale.

There is only one person capable of doing that jutsu, its creator himself.

_He did kill Rin, after all._

Even as she thinks it, the Yamanaka knows there must be more to the story, a lot more. She opens her mouth to ask, break the unspoken deal they have, but Kakashi is clearly unwilling to share more since he leaves her in a flurry of leafs.

Akira is alone with her thoughts once more.

* * *

The sight of Hanare-sensei drinking to the point of passing out, _hurts. _She can't imagine the feeling, doesn't want to ever experience the loss of a child. Ryuji hadn't been sensei's, but the woman holds herself responsible all the same. Because, in a way, he had been hers.

Hers to scold and teach and take care of.

In many ways, Akira thinks of herself as Hanare-sensei's child, too. So, it's only right, what she rushes to do next. The yellow light of the open bar is bright enough to blind while the smell of lingering alcohol that clungs to her teacher is downright repulsive. Even so, the blonde pryes Hanare's fingers off the bottle, least she'd start drinking again.

"Akira-chan?" the slurring of her name isn't funny and the way the Inuzuka's eyes widen in recognition makes her feel bad for witnessing to her teacher's moment of weakness.

"Hai, it's me." she nods, returning the bottle to the owner who sneers her way. Akira doesn't pay him any mind, he has robbed Hanare-sensei off money enough for one evening. What happens next convinces her that Team Five isn't gone. Broken, yes, but still standing, bound by forces stronger than death even.

Suddenly, Shisui is there, glaring at the bar owner. "Hanare-sensei, Akira-chan." he greets them cheerfully, as though the three of them aren't an outcast, a failure and a heartbroken genius respectively.

"Shisui-chan." their teacher grasps both of their wrists when her feet give way to gravity. Standing is difficult, walking by herself even more so and her heart aches for the woman who was, still is, the leader of their pack. "Y-you should have n-never seen me like this." she hiccups, cheeks burning, the sake she drank being just half the reason.

Akira squeezes her hand in what she hopes it's a reassuring manner. She doesn't know how to comfort people and touch has always been something she hated, but it's a neccessary evil sometimes, one she tries not to indulge in.

In contrast, Shisui is a pillar of strength, an emotionally mature one, as if to make up for what she lacks.

"Iie, sensei. Nothing could make us think any less of you." he squeezes her hand, too, making Akira feel like she has _finally_ done something right.

"I agree with him, Hanare-sensei." she tells her softly. "We will get you home."

The two of them, working together, succeed and say nothing to each other the entire walk back home. It's as they near the gates, that Shisui seems to have made up his mind. He catches her wrist, effectively halting any potential movements.

Akira allows the contact, even if it burns her.

"I haven't talked to you in over a year."

Right in this moment, under the pale light of the moon, he isn't Shisui of the Body Flicker, the shinobi enemy flee from before the battle even begins. No, he is Shisui, the twelve-year-old boy who misses his teammates, misses how they used to be, back when things were easy and he didn't run the risk of being ink-drowned in titles he did not ask for, nor wanted.

He isn't a patient person, never was, never will be. Though he understands people's need for solitude, he doesn't share it. Especially these days. Shisui feels as though he'd end up banging his head against the walls if left alone, without missions to focus on or voices other than his own to keep him company.

"Akira-chan, say something." he pleads.

Silence hurts more than anything. He has been stabbed, poisoned, hit by jutsu, nearly killed plenty of times and the pain of none comes close to the pain of silence between him and a friend, between him and the one person who doesn't treat him as if he were some omnipotent being, or the Uchiha 'clown.'

"What do you want me to say, Shisui?" her voice is tired and it pains him, causing her discomfort, but Kami, the more she ignores him, ignores their team, ignores her own pain...the more he wants to be there.

He answers her question with another question.

"Is it true that Danzo-sama wants to recruit you?"


End file.
